India, US discuss revised TRIPS vax waiver proposal

United States trade representative Katherine Tai has expressed her country’s support for India’s revised proposal for a waiver to certain intellectual property protections for Covid-19 vaccines in a virtual meeting with commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal.Tai welcomed an update from Goyal about India’s efforts to revise and resubmit the proposal for a waiver to certain provisions of the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) to ensure people across the world are vaccinated against the coronavirus at the earliest.The focus of the revised proposal – also backed by South Africa – will continue to be ensuring “equitable, affordable and timely access” for all to the antidote against the virus, but it will be reworked to address concerns of some nations that the scope of the original proposal was broad and might hurt the interest of their pharmaceutical companies, people familiar with the developments said.Tai and Goyal discussed a range of issues related to the control of pandemic at the virtual meeting late on Friday. According to a US government statement, Tai “explained her support for the waiver of intellectual property protections for Covid-19 vaccines and text-based negotiations at the WTO, which are part of the Biden-Harris administration’s comprehensive effort to expand vaccine manufacturing and distribution around the world”. The two leaders “agreed to stay in regular communication in the days ahead”, it said.The US is learnt to have conveyed to both India and South Africa that it may be difficult for the Biden administration to support the move for exemption of IPR protection on anti-Covid-19 vaccines unless they reworked the proposal to address some of the concerns of pharmaceutical companies.

from Economic Times https://ift.tt/3eNERqj